In what you’ve done with your life thus far, is it giving you what you want? Is it giving you what you want?

When you look toward the future, when you look at all that’s going on out here, is there some place within yourself you say “Hey, I know I need to be out there in that arena. I know I can do more than what I’ve been doing. I know that there’s some great music that I have within me that I haven’t brought out here yet.”

Is that something that you begin to look at within yourself?

See, I say if you look at your life, and if you’re not getting what you want, you owe it to yourself to do something differently. If you want a job – 85%, they say, of Americans go to jobs but they’re unhappy. If you’re doing something 8 hours a day that you don’t like, it’s not giving you what you want, it’s not giving you a strong feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment.

You’re miserable, you hate to go there. You’re depressed just thinking about it, you’re saying the ‘Thank God, it’s Friday’ song every week. If that’s what it is, you owe it to yourself to start strategically working to change directions.

See, but you know what most people will do? Most people will resist change. Most people will fight change as if change would be worse than what they’re already experiencing.

See, they know this, they’re familiar with this: most people will not challenge the unknown, they won’t just step out there.

Well see, there’s certain things that got to be in place, they got to see it all together. And life isn’t like that. That’s not how you grow.

So as you look at your life, you think “I’m not getting what I want”, as you begin to look toward the future, begin to know that whatever it takes for you to create that, you’ve got that in you. You got that.

You’ve got genius in you, you’ve got goodness in you, you’ve got creativeness in you. If you decide to take the initiative to change the current quality of your life, I say to you that you will find that the universe is on your side; that life is on your side.

Now, will it be turbulent? Yes. Will it be easy? No, no. Will you have some opposition? Yes. Will I make a lot of mistakes? Yes.

Will I get hurt? Yes!

A lot of people won’t try anything different in life because they don’t want to get hurt. Let me tell you something: it’s too much pain to duck! Pain is everywhere. You can hide under here, it will come where you are. It’s everywhere. Viktor Frankl calls it ‘unavoidable suffering’.

You can’t duck it. But most people spend their life not wanting to deal with the pain of rejection, the pain of defeat, the pain of being disappointed, the pain of losing, the pain of failure, the pain of being criticized, the pain of not being liked, the pain, the pain, the pain. That’s called life!

Life is full of pain. It’s everywhere. But guess what, there’s no gain without pain. Because it’s the pain of regret that you experience.

“If I had it to do over again,” that’s a pain. Don’t you know that? When you know — I was in a seminar once and this lady stood up: “If I had my life to live over again.” She talked about all of the things that she would do and you can feel the pain of regret in her voice.

The pain of regret. She still experienced pain. She was trying not to experience the pain of defeat, the pain of disappointment, the pain of loss, the pain of lack of support. And she still experienced pain. It was right there. We can’t get around it.

Most people are governed by their habits, their fears, and the opinions of others. A lot of people never try anything differently because they have been convinced by people in their lives that they value, that they can’t do it.

They’re living within the context of the opinions that other people have of them: the low expectations. Many people doubt themselves because when they thought about doing something in some critical point in their life, somebody they respected and honored, somebody they believed in, somebody that they loved, someone they trusted, said: “you can’t do that”. And they accepted that.

As you look at your life, ask yourself the question: what would your life be like, what would your life look like, if you decided not to care what people thought of you?